HD Expo returns to Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas on May 4-5, 2027, bringing together the designers, architects, makers, manufacturers and hospitality professionals shaping the spaces where we stay, eat, meet and travel.
HD Expo brings hospitality design back to Las Vegas
From hotel rooms and restaurants to resorts, spas and shared spaces, hospitality interiors are shaped by an increasingly complex exchange between design ideas, material innovation, performance and experience. Each year, HD Expo brings many of the people behind this process together in Las Vegas, creating a meeting point between creative practice and the products that ultimately enter built projects.
Returning to Mandalay Bay on May 4-5, 2027, the event will gather interior designers and architects alongside manufacturers, hotel and resort operators, developers, purchasing professionals and other figures involved in the development of contemporary hospitality environments.
The upcoming edition also marks a shift in format. For the first time, the exhibition floor will unfold across two concentrated days, preceded on May 3 by a dedicated pre-conference programme.
From material exploration to real-world specification
For architects and interior designers, discovering a product is only the beginning of a much longer process.
Materials need to be touched. Furniture needs to be experienced at full scale. Lighting needs to be understood beyond an image, while surfaces, textiles and finishes often reveal qualities in person that are difficult to communicate digitally.
It is within this physical process of discovery and evaluation that HD Expo positions itself.
Across more than 25 product categories, the exhibition spans furniture, lighting and seating, bath and spa, flooring, surfaces, architectural and building products, accessories, technology and sustainable solutions.
The breadth reflects the increasingly layered character of hospitality itself. Hotels today borrow from residential design, restaurants become testing grounds for new spatial and material ideas, and hospitality principles increasingly appear across workplaces, healthcare, senior living and other environments.
Rather than existing as an isolated design typology, hospitality has become a field in which architecture, interiors, technology, service and experience continually overlap.
Who is shaping the hospitality project?
The audience moving through HD Expo offers another view into how hospitality projects are developed today.
Interior designers represent 41% of attendees, architects 12%, hotel and resort operators 15%, and purchasing agents 10%, alongside developers, hospitality executives and professionals working across restaurant, casino and entertainment projects.
These disciplines rarely operate independently.
A single hotel may move between an ownership group, developer, architecture practice, interior designer, operator, purchasing company and dozens – sometimes hundreds – of manufacturers before opening its doors.
HD Expo places these different actors within the same environment.
According to figures from the event, 88% of attendees are involved in purchasing decisions, either directly or by influencing and approving specifications, while 71% plan to spend between $1 million and $4.9 million during the following 12 months.
The numbers are significant not simply for their commercial value, but because they point to the connection between what is presented on the exhibition floor and projects already moving toward realization.
13,000 professionals and a changing design community
The 2026 edition welcomed more than 13,000 professionals from all 50 U.S. states and 34 countries.
Among them were 171 Hosted Buyers attending with active projects and representatives from 42 Hospitality Giants firms. Across the event, visitors generated more than 70,000 product scans and 1,330 accepted meetings.
Yet one of the more revealing figures may be the number of newcomers.
39% of attendees in 2026 experienced HD Expo for the first time.
For an event with more than three decades of history, the figure points toward a hospitality community that continues to change as new designers, practices, brands and decision-makers enter the industry.
Las Vegas and the geography of hospitality
Las Vegas provides an unusual backdrop for a conversation about hospitality design.
Few cities demonstrate the relationship between architecture, interiors, entertainment and experience at such a scale. Hotels operate almost as cities within the city, bringing together accommodation, restaurants, retail, performance, gaming and public space under a single roof.
HD Expo’s audience also reflects its geographic position in the American West.
More than 50% of attendees come from California, Nevada and Texas, while Florida and Arizona complete the five U.S. states with the strongest attendance. Beyond the United States, Canada, Mexico, China and the United Kingdom are among the most represented international markets.
For international studios and manufacturers, the event consequently offers a concentrated view of the people and companies influencing hospitality development across the western United States and the wider North American market.
What changes in 2027?
The most visible change to HD Expo in 2027 will be time.
For the first time, the exhibition itself will be condensed into two days – May 4 and 5 – while May 3 will become a pre-conference day dedicated to HD University and Owners Workshops.
The shorter format responds to a challenge facing international design events more broadly: how can a physical gathering remain meaningful when professionals have less time away from their studios, offices and projects?
HD Expo’s answer is concentration.
By bringing the exhibition into a tighter timeframe, the organizers aim to create a denser rhythm of product discovery, conversations and meetings across the show floor.
The 2027 edition will also expand its outreach across the West Coast, Las Vegas, Western Canada and Latin America, with increased attention to ownership groups and procurement professionals.
Its Hosted Buyer Program is set to grow as well, introducing further structured one-to-one meetings between participating manufacturers and buyers working on active projects.
Whether the condensed format changes how visitors navigate and experience the exhibition will be one of the elements to watch when the hospitality community returns to Las Vegas next May.
88% of attendees are involved in purchasing decisions, either directly or by influencing and approving specifications, while 71% plan to spend between $1 million and $4.9 million during the following 12 months.
Beyond the trade show floor
At a time when almost every product can first be encountered through a screen, the continued relevance of physical design events raises an interesting question.
What still needs to happen in person?
For hospitality, much of the answer remains tactile.
The weight of a chair, texture of a textile, reflectivity of a surface, warmth of a light source or construction of a piece of furniture can influence a specification in ways that images and technical data alone cannot communicate.
But physical events also make visible something less tangible: the network of relationships behind the spaces we eventually experience.
Designers meet manufacturers. Architects encounter materials they may later specify. Operators bring the realities of hospitality into conversations about design, while developers and purchasing professionals connect those ideas to budgets, timelines and projects.
It is somewhere within this exchange – between idea and material, specification and experience, design and delivery – that HD Expo continues to define its role.
HD Expo 2027 takes place May 4-5, 2027 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, with its pre-conference programme taking place on May 3.
Organized by: Emerald
Date: 04-05 May 2027
Location: Mandalay Bay Convention Center
City / Country: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
website: www.hdexpo.hospitalitydesign.com
CONTACT & INFORMATION
The official representative of the HD Expo 2027 exhibition for Greece is Fishmotion (Costas Koutsantonakis).
e-mail: info@fishmotion.com
Contact Person: Costas Koutsantonakis
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